Android O Developer Preview is Out and It Has Several Key Updates

Google has randomly announced developer preview of Android O, and the latest of Android can be installed on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel C and also can be tested on Android Emulator.

But what so cool about Android O lets find out.

1. Background Limits

How many times have you cursed your smartphone not keeping up, even though you might not have used it for whole day.

Yeah it happens to all of us, but don’t worry with Android M Doze and Android N Doze on the Go, Android O background limits will limit resources consumed by apps not optimized and will pull plug on battery sucking background services.

The main services that will be automatically limited on what apps can do in the background, in three main areas implicit broadcasts, background services, and location updates.

2. Notification Channels

Android update without changes to how notification works, that’s not possible and now your notifications are going to be grouped in channels, allowing app developers to utilize API, so all your technology related notifications will be grouped together and all your social networks messages will be bundled.

3. Picture in Picture Mode aka PIP

With PIP mode now Android O will enable users to watch videos while browsing, chatting and typing a long tedious email isn’t that cool.

Further user can define size, aspect ratio and can also control the playback with set of custom interactions.

4. Autofill API

Finally Android has become even smarter with addition of autofill. Now you can have your address, email and phone number filled within fraction of seconds provided your app developer implements the API.

5. More Control over Font

Now developers will have more control over their apps by declaring the font style and weight along with the font files in the XML layouts.

6. Adaptive Icons

Android has been customised heavily from time and again and sometimes most frustrating thing about Android is app icons which doesn’t seem seamless and are in different shapes and sizes.

With Android O the UI will get major boost and now all icons will seem uniform with Adaptive icons. Now icons displays in different shapes, based on a mask selected by the device, and they also animates on interactions.

Other than this major improvements are made to music codecs supported, also with a help of Sony now Hi Res audio with LDAC support is coming to Android to satisfy audiophiles.

Apart from this a new feature named WiFi Aware is implemented which will work similar to that of Airdrop on iPhones and MiDrop on MIUI powered devices, Keyboard Navigation, improvement to Android Webview, Java 8 API and runtime optimizations and thousands of bugs squashed.

Will update more as soon as more is known and the Android O will be named at Google I/O 2017 which will be held in summer.